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Star Fox is one of my favorite games ever, so I enjoyed playing this one!  I played through the mission a few times to try different weapons.  I had the most luck with dual Gatling Guns, but I'm also really biased towards Gatling Guns in general, so it could just be me.

The Devlog is very informative and I like how it talks about the struggles in creating the game: scope creep (which is something I'm battling in my project right now) and "Real Life" (which for a solo-dev means one bad event takes out your entire team until it's dealt with).

I also would have never known your ship's engines were rice-bowls without you mentioning it.

I'd be interested to see how different upgrades and weapons affect the gameplay in the future, such as having different weapon types be stronger against certain enemy types, or special weapons with limited ammo.  I'm also curious to see what effect Companions would have.

Remember: "Half as far as you wanted to get" is still progress!

This game is off to a great start!  The character-switching effect is really cool, mechanically and visually.  My reflexes are not very good, so I didn't get very far, but I did kill the boss once!  (at least, I think he was the boss...)

I definitely understand the struggle you mentioned in the Devlog.  When I started my game, the first big issue I had was trying to figure out what kind of game it actually was!  The style of game you settled on has a lot of potential, though.  And the switching mechanic could lead to some really interesting boss fights.

I'm looking forward to seeing where this project goes!

This game was a lot of fun!

I went the "nerdy librarian girl" route because I always do that in every game ever.  I ran Prudence / Temperence, and died once to the Golem and once by firing a gun until I went insane (that one was on me lol).  This game had a lot of lines and references that made me crack up, and because of that, I managed to finish it in one sitting.

The Devlog is very informative and I found myself relating to a lot of the struggles.  I constantly find myself underestimating how long things will take and how hard things will be, so that resonated with me a lot.

Congratulations on finishing the game!  It's a huge accomplishment!

Thanks for checking out my devlog!  I was also disappointed that I wasn't able to get those updates in by the end of the jam.  I knew restructuring the whole game would take a long time, but I still underestimated it.  At this point, the new version hasn't even cleared the first game-day!  But once everything is in place, development should be quick and easy, so long as I can keep feature-creep at bay.

The interactive life-sim events are not in the current version of the demo, but I did post updates about them in the Discord.  They're still a work-in-progress, and I'm still brainstorming ideas to make this part of the game more interesting.  I've had to dial it back a few times - the original writeup was so complicated that I accidentally started turning the game into a school-sim instead of a magical girl game, which was going a bit overboard.  So far, the "School" events are limited to adjusting Chiyoko's effort level, dealing with scripted and random events that raise or lower Chiyoko's mood or grades, and tests / track-meets (an early example of which is in the current demo).

Overall, I'm happy with the progress that was made, though I wish I had more to show for it.

Thanks for checking it out!

I agree, the ATB system is not great.  In all honesty, I really don't like RPG Maker MZ's default ATB system - it seems tacked on and incomplete, and is super finicky and hard to modify.  I only used it because it was the only way to get the party-member position-switch mechanic to behave properly.  Luckily, I think I've found a way around that, so the next version of the game will have a more conventional Turn-Based combat system.

Mr. Nagawa's explanations are total gibberish and have pretty much nothing to do with math!  I think there's a line where he says something about a number being "past tense", having a participle, and being conjugated (that's grammar stuff lol), and he references "Fergnatz's Last Theorim", which is a mispelled nonsense version of some math thing I heard about once.  The scene is total nonsense and was fun to write, and honestly, it's what normal math explanations sound like to me anyway lol.

I like the idea of a time-of-day on the HUD and may work it in.  The game is getting a "Night Time" phase soon, which gives Chiyoko more options for training and patroling the city, so it would make sense to add it.

Thanks so much for checking it out!
N.Buffalo will exist in-game on the next update! (in story CG form...)

Very polished and fun!  Died a few times but I felt like I was an expert at controlling it by the end.

I'm not very good at shmups but I finally managed to win, game controls really well and it look and sounds great too!

The best way I can describe it is that the thing spawned in, the screen went POWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOW and I blew up lol.  I wondered maybe if it spawned on top of me or something.

Its a cool game that kinda reminds me of the arcade games of the Atari era (no-nonsense and just jump right in to the gameplay, black background, lots of flashing!)  I managed to get six bosses.  I had the most trouble with the Launcher boss, but it was the Splitter boss that kind of istakilled me somehow (I couldn't see what happened due to the flashing lol)

Thanks a lot!  Writing this was a lot of fun!

Just added download versions for Windows and Mac.

This is a lot of fun!  I love the music and pixel art.  Managed to get S-Rank with no deaths (beat the final boss with one health left!)

Thanks for the detailed review.  You hit the nail on the head as far as one of my biggest issues with this game and the story I was trying to tell - it takes forever to get to the "game."  I wanted to show Chiyoko's life pre-magical girl, just for one day, but it kind of drags since there are few choices and pretty much nothing to do.  I've considered some ways to fix it, including trimming it down, or adding more interactivity to school / hanging out / etc, or adding a fight or dungeon during the nightmare sequence.  There definitely wasn't time to fix it during this game-jam, but I'm still considering it.

The 8-bit style graphics use the NES color palette but I actually did partially base them off of the MSDOS games I played many years ago.  The black backdrop with the ornamental UI frames were inspired by MSDOS KOEI games, though my pixel art doesn't really come close to those.

Thanks for checking out my game, and for hosting this game-jam!  I was wanting to make a magical girl story for a long time, so when I found out about this jam I kinda went all out.  I've already started on a post-game-jam demo, which fixes some of the issues and adds some stuff that didn't make it in.  I'd be happy to post updates on the discord, and I look forward to participating in the next game-jam as well!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!  I'm working on the game for the Continue-It Jam, so I'm hoping to complete it someday.  I'm still working out a better implementation of the daily activities in the game, so that aspect of it should improve!

Thanks for checking it out!   Winston was definitely the most fun-to-write character in anything I've done so far.  🤣

Thanks!  Winston is my favorite as well, he's fun to write.

Excellent art and music, and I love the character designs!  Unfortunately, I can't get past the first stage due to my hands not cooperating with the DF  JK key arrangement.  If it was four keys with no gap, or the arrow keys, I could probably manage it.    🤣

Thanks a lot!  Its been a lot of fun making it so far.  I'm looking forward to continuing it!

Thanks a lot!  I'm looking forward to working more on this project!

It's a lot of fun and very polished!  I wasn't very good at it but I still enjoyed it!

Excellent work!  It's really cool to see a game like this made in RPG Maker!  I love the character designs as well!

Excellent presentation!  The characters were fun and the graphics and sound are great!  For the mechanics, I feel like the batting could use a slight visual cue of some kind, as the angle makes it hard to tell how close the ball is.  The pitching also seemed a bit random - it didn't seem to matter where I aimed in determining where the ball went or whether or not it was hit.

It was still a fun game, even though I lost 12 - 1! 🤣

There were a couple direct quote references for fun, but I'm sure Madoka's influence seeped into more corners of this project than I realize since it's the only Magical Girl show I've seen.

Thanks a lot!  I did my best to format it like a classic (pre-Madoka) Magical Girl show, even though I've never seen one 🤣!  I'm really hoping I'll be able to continue working on the project, because it's been a lot of fun!

There isn't a way to save due to RPG Maker MZ's handling of Message Boxes.  You can't really do anything during a sequence of messages other than press ENTER or ESC, both of which just go on to the next message.  Adding a SAVE menu during the day kind of throws off the pacing, but I might consider adding them in places.  Other than that, I'm thinking I'll either add a "RETRY" option after a bad ending, or just make it so there are no bad endings and have the game continue after losing the battle (Winston intervenes and saves you, Chiyoko blacks out and unleashes some crazy latent power and drives the enemy away, etc)  I was moving towards the latter solution, but burned out and ran out of time.

Thanks for checking it out!  Yeah, it's basically a visual novel so there's a lot of dialogue.  Could probably be edited or trimmed down in places, but I kinda ran out of time.

Great soundtrack all around!  I enjoyed "Welcome to my Personal Hell" and "Decaying Tower of Thoughts" the most.

Incredible work!  I'm a huge fan of authentic sounding chiptunes, so this is one of my favorite entries so far!  My favorite track was Neural Reclamation but they were all amazing!

Nobody Can Hear You Pray is amazing!  If it was playing in a movie that I was watching alone at night, I'd probably have to turn on all the lights in the house.  Loved the whole soundtrack!

Great soundtrack!  Sounds amazing from start to finish!  Immortal Jungle was my favorite.

I like the main menu theme best!  And I'm glad to see someone else using an 8Bit style!

Love the style and energy in this soundtrack!  The voice lines were a fun addition as well!

I really like Unearthed Secrets, it has a great mystery vibe!

I like the surreal dream-like feeling of Fish Symphony!

Great Sci-Fi atmosphere in this soundtrack!  My favorite track was Zulturum.

Great soundtrack!  My favorites were "Hotrock Hollow" and "Tidal."  They kind of gave me a "90s PC Gaming" vibe.